PRESIDENT'S PANEL HEARS TESTIMONY OF A CUBAN-AMERICAN CRIME GROUP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160051-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: June 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160051-3
CR4?`17 V2E'ED PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
~' 25 June 1985
President's hears testimony
panel ?
of a cuban-American came group
By Fen Montaigne
Inquirer Ste" Writer
NEW YORK - A hooded witness
and a federal investigator yesterday
described the emergence of a sophis-
ticated and powerful Cuban-Ameri-
can organized crime group known as
"The Corporation," run by a man
called the Cuban Godfather and
working with traditional Mafia fam-
ilies to control illegal gambling in
New York and other cities.
The testimony about The Corpora-
tion was given before the President's
Commission on organized Crime,
which is holding three days of hear-
ings here on the involvement of or-
ganized crime in gambling, both le-
gal and illegal.
As the federal investigator testi-
fied about the Cuban-American
crime group, the alleged boss of the
organization - Jose Miguel Battle Sr.
- sat in the audience with a scowl
and carefully followed the testi-
mony.
Witnesses said that in New York
City alone, The Corporation had 2,500
members and weekly gambling reve-
nues of more than $2 million, that it
routinely used murder and arson to
eliminate competition from other
bookmakers, that it had entered into
a "mutual-assistance pact" with the
Mafia to share proceeds from illegal
gambling and that it laundered ille-
gal funds through lotteries in Puerto
Rico and several states.
Battle, 55, a portly man in a dark
blue suit and black hair swept
straight back, is known by many
names, including Don Miguel and
Padrino, Spanish for "godfather." He
was scheduled to testify yesterday,
but the commission staff did not call
him after learning he would invoke
his Fifth Amendment privilege
against self-incrimination.
Investigators described The Corpo-
ration as just one element in a huge
illegal gambling machine that earns
an estimated $26 billion to $30 billioq
a year from wagering on sports, num-
bers and illegal casino games.
Several witnesses testified that or-
ganized crime had profited from le-
galized casino gambling by skim-
ming money from casinos in Las
Vegas and by controlling some
unions and a segment of the junket
business in Atlantic City.
"It is clear ... that gambling pro-
vides organized crime with the
money it needs to flourish," said
commission chairman Irving R.
Kaufman, a judge on the W.S. Second
Circuit Court of Appeals in New
York.
The commission, created in 1983 by
President Reagan, has held six hear-
ings and will make recommenda-
tions next year on how to fight or-
ganized crime.
Yesterday's hearing seemed de-
signed to entertain the news media
as much as to educate the commis-
sion, which includes retired U.S. Su-
preme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
Witnesses gave demonstrations of
how bookmakers used numbers slips
that dissolved in water or burned
instantaneously. Other witnesses
showed surveillance films of book-
making parlors and videotapes of
gambling raids.
Commission staff members piled
up stacks of illegally obtained cur-
rency and displayed gruesome photo-
graphs of the faces of three Chicago
bookmakers allegedly executed by
organized crime members.
Anthony Lombardi, a commission
investigator. testified that Battle was
a former Havana vice Police officer
who took part in the unsuccessful
Bev of Pigs invasion sponsored by
the CIA, in 1961. After the invasion
he was made a lieutenant in the U.S.
Army by an act of Congress, Lom-
bardi said. Battle then moved to Mi-
ami and established the country's
first Cuban-controlled gambling or-
ganization, according to Lombardi.
Battle moved to Union City, N.J., in
the late 1960s and later expanded his
gambling operations into New York
City, according to Lombardi's testi-
mony.
"The result was a kind of mutual-
assistance pact between The Corpo-
ration and La Cosa Nostra, whereby
The Corporation paid a percentage of
the action and laid off some bets
with the Mafia," said Lombardi.
Today, The Corporation virtually
controls illegal gambling in Spanish
neighborhoods in New York, Miami
and other cities, including the illegal
sale of $14 million in Puerto Rican
lottery tickets each week, Lombardi
said.
The Corporation uses the Puerto
Rican lottery to launder money by
obtaining the names of lottery win-
ners, paying them more than the
winning ticket was worth and then
redeeming the winning tickets, Lom-
bardi said. That way, he said, mem-
bers of The Corporation can claim
that they legally obtained money
through lottery winnings.
The hooded witness, a member of
The Corporation since 1980, de-
scribed a vast network in New York
City in which dozens of illegal bet-
ting parlors owned by The Corpora.
tion each provided $7,000 to $12,000 a
day in revenue. Speaking through an
interpreter, he said that The Corpo
ration employed three full-time at-
torneys and regularly laundered
money through banks.
The hooded witness described how
The Corporation sent weekly payoffs
to the Mafia and how Battle, whom
he called Jose Miguel, used a chief
enforcer nicknamed Lalo to take
care of competitors.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160051-3